Well, many of you might know that I have been chomping at the bit to complete the quest "The Villainy of Galrath". This quest was really appealing because I knew that it must be very difficult because it came with a reward of 4,000 experience points! (For those that don’t know, the typical quest in Guild Wars only gives you around 500 experience points in the particular area I was at.)

Kingfisher, Silverwolf and I made a go of it a few weeks back, but to no avail. We were quickly overrun by hordes of creatures and just utterly demolished so we called it a night and slunk off to bed with our heads held in shame.

Well, after sulking for weeks I was finally ready to try again (really I had some personal stuff going on, but that’s another story). I fired up Guild Wars and prepared to tackle the Villain!

As I was forming a ragtag group of six in Kryta, Silver kept telling me not to bother starting the quest so far away because the Temple of Ages was so much closer. But I didn’t listen and ventured out with my group to bag us a villain.

We were a mixed bag of nuts with varying degrees of game experience, levels and professions, but we fought with gusto and pride and plowed through many areas and hordes of monsters with much success.

At one point (probably about the third area from Kryta), I lost my pet, Namanthe to a particularly nasty mob. I called for a moment of silence for my brave companion and it seemed that the landscape itself froze for a moment out of respect (could have been lag too I guess).

Then with a cry, I charged forward and called down a firestorm on the last mob standing between us and the next area.

“THIS ONES FROM NAMANTHE!!!!!!!!!!”

Feeling my pain, my companions charged into the fray as well and we made quick work of the entirely overwhelmed mob and entered the next area.

As we stood there glancing around at the dangers that awaited us in this new section of the land, my pet Namanthe came trotting up to me and with tears of disbelief and joy, I hugged my truest friend and praised the gods for returning him to me as a reward for my party’s pure hearts and bravery.

Continuing on, we finally battled our way to the Temple of Ages. (which is where Silverwolf said I should have started anyway... :oops: oops!) and there we were able to bolster our party with two more. (It was here that Silverwolf joined the party)

(Unfortunately the original group of six did not stay together, when it was suggested we didn't have enough people in the current district to get that last member, we changed districts the stupid way and so some of the original six got lost in the confusion)

(p.s. the smart way to change districts as a group is to run out of the town and then back in, the stupid way is to say, "hey, everyone switch to district 3" because the first method keeps the party together and the second disbands it)

So with some new members, the party once again began the trek to take out the Villain of Galrath. This new party immediately began to show signs that things were going to be a little different than the last configuration that fought its way to the Temple of Ages. First the speed at which we began moving through the mobs was at a much faster pace. This seemed to be fine though because we were mowing through these mobs like we had all just sharpened our mower blades and it was the first grass mowing of the summer.

That is things appeared to be going well on the surface, but there was trouble a brewing and it began with our primary monk.

"Looks like you guys don't even need me"

"Can't you guys wait for me to regen?"

"I might as well leave!"

"Hello, doesn't anyone even care I'm leaving?"

The party was quite confused. First, the majority of the party had taken Monk as a secondary profession so most had just been healing themselves, so it was a little weird that this Monk needed to wait to have their energy regenerate. But a few of us did attempt to communicate with her [assumption of sex based on the great demand for attention only... ;) ] and in conversing with her it became quite apparent that our primary Monk was a diva who craved being the center of attention and felt unimportant if they weren't needed desperately by the party at every moment.

Divas….

So, the furious battles continued (and pacification of the diva continued as well) and we finally pushed our way through the masses of enemies to the area that contained the Villain himself! However, it was here that a hot headed warrior brought death upon us in a most unfortunate and timely fashion.

Maybe it was because he saw the goal so close in sight, maybe it was overconfidence or maybe it was because he was a moron, but our primary tank [Poop Pirate, good lord people how hard is it to come up with a decent name!!!!!! sorry ;) ] engaged a mob that was quite difficult in itself but then he quickly engaged a second and a third mob as well.

This massive combined mob began decimating our party. Warriors, Elementalists and Rangers alike were dropping all around. Silver went down trying to defend the primary tank, I went down towards the back of the party but attacked from above by the masses of the mob.

Eventually only the Diva Monk was left. (And let me tell you she was in her glory too! So critical, so key for the continuance of the quest!)

Well, at the sight of so many of our group down, two of our weaker party members chickened out and dropped out entirely (I don’t fault them, things did look pretty bad and they were good companions for the first half of the quest), but our party was now reduced to six.

Now with the monk still alive we still had a chance, but there was just a slight problem. That massive combined mob was still on top of all of our downed corpses! Well, we chatted about it for a while and began to select individuals for the monk to resurrect one at a time.

However, things just didn’t go according to plan. People would run towards the monk when they were resurrected which would pull the mob directly towards that very critical monk. Then when I rushed in on a suicide mission to resurrect Silverwolf (because I knew he at least would run the correct way), the monk ran the opposite direction of Silverwolf and though he fought bravely the mob still overwhelmed him and our stupid monk didn’t even capitalize on his help and resurrect everyone quickly while he had the mob pulled away.

So we were back to square one, five of us dead and just the monk alive. Well, after Silverwolf died, he and another player both quit out of frustration with our monk (the Diva REALLY needed to learn how to use here character strategically). Now our original party of eight was down to four and three of us were corpses scattered across the field with the enemy patrolling on our faces.

We discussed whether we had a chance and we all agreed we would stay till the end. So pact firmly in place we decided our best strategy was to try to pull individuals from the mob and kill them off one by one until the mob finally took us all.

The monk would resurrect one or two of us (not Poop Pirate, he was too deeply ensconced in enemy territory to even attempt). We would battle until we got weak, the monk would run and the rest would keep the mob aggro’d so the monk could live to do it again.

Let me tell you it was quite a funny sight seeing the monk rush in resurrect someone and then that person and the monk running like chickens around the area trying not to agro any other groups and getting into a position where they could help each other attack the mob.

We did whittle the mob down quite a bit but then we finally got too many of them at one time (that and combined with our weakened condition due to the death penalty) so we all bit the dust.

High death penalties, half the party gone, things looked pretty hopeless but we were determined NOT to give up and bravely tightened our gear and our strategy to prevent accidental aggros.

Our strategy consisted of sending Poop Pirate, our tank, out to agro the mob. The rest of us would remain well out of the mobs way and attack from a distance and hopefully never aggroing the mob itself. This would allow the monk to focus on just healing one individual and the rest of us could use distance and area attacks as much as possible from relative safety.

It was a great plan, but it had one very surprising flaw. As we attempted to implement it with the first mob we encountered, every time Poop Pirate would run forward, our secondary warrior, Tera, would follow. Poop Pirate would stop, and we’d all yell at Tera to come back and stand with the rest of us.

And then we’d repeat the process. And again.

It was after the third time of this that I proposed that potentially Tera did not read (and most likely speak) English.

Oh, the inhumanity! So close, such a perfect plan, but we couldn’t even communicate with all the members of our party!

Well, after attempting to various attempts at making this foreign warrior understand the plan in every language we knew (Spanish, German, Dutch, Japanese and French and Hieroglyphics on the radar) Poop Pirate came up with a plan.

He ran back halfway across the area and then quickly turned around and sprinted back to where I was still standing just outside of agro range of the mob. Man, talk about funny, Tera followed him the whole way back while we just stood there!

But it worked! He was then able to agro the group before, Tera, the foreigner, reached us again. (Unfortunately, when Tera DID reach us, she still charged right pass us and entered the fray. I’m sure she was muttering to herself in whatever language she did speak about the crazy party members she got stuck with)

Still, it was working and we managed to take out a few more mobs working our way slowly and carefully to the end of the quest indicated on the map.

And you know what we did it! Though half the party was gone, though encumbered with an attention starved diva of a monk and a foreign warrior with whom we could not communicate, we defeated the Villain of Galrath!

I don’t know that I could have asked for a better experience on this quest than what I went through. There was drama, comedy, overwhelming odds and a small team of mix-matched but determined warriors that preserved and came out on top in the end!